


Belonging

by Gemmiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Frottage, Human Castiel, M/M, Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-13 06:59:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1216915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gemmiel/pseuds/Gemmiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newly human Cas has trouble sleeping. Dean helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Belonging

**Author's Note:**

> Another little AU in which most of the events of season nine never happened. Human Cas has come to live at the bunker, and Sam and Kevin are there somewhere in the background (though not in this story). Sam is fine, of course! 
> 
> I'm probably going to write a second version of this story from Dean's point of view at some point.

The first time it happens, it’s innocent.

Castiel is stretched out in the darkened bedroom the Winchesters gave him when he showed up at the bunker that afternoon, tired and battered and human. He’s still stressed, anxious, jittering with nerves—an unfamiliar sensation he doesn’t care for—but after everything he’s been through in the past few days, his exhausted body asserts itself and collapses into slumber almost instantly.

The next thing he knows he’s jerking awake in a strange, dark place, yelling in terror.

The door creaks open, and through his panic he hears bare feet running in his direction. “Hey,” a familiar voice says, and then there’s a weight on the bed beside him, and someone is gathering him into their arms. “Hey, Cas. It’s okay.”

He flails frantically, because the few times he’s been touched as a human have not been pleasant. He's been wandering, lost and homeless, for a week, and he's already grown to associate the touch of others with theft and anger and violence. But the someone pins his arms, gently but firmly, and strokes his hair, murmuring his name softly. The low, soothing voice begins to pierce his haze of fear, and he relaxes slightly.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, it’s me. You had a nightmare, buddy.”

Cas forces himself to relax. He’s suddenly aware that his heart is pounding in his chest, and that his skin is covered with sweat. Dean’s arms are wrapped around him protectively, and Dean’s body is pressed right up against his, and for the first time since he found himself on Earth with all his grace stripped away, he doesn’t feel quite so alone. 

He still doesn't feel like he belongs, of course. How could he? He's always been an angel, and now he's suddenly something completely different, a member of a species he doesn't even understand. But at least he knows he doesn't have to cope with this new, strange experience entirely on his own. He has Dean to help him.

Comforted, he drifts back into sleep. And when he wakes up in the morning, Dean is still there, his arms still around Cas, sleeping peacefully. 

They don’t talk about it.

*****

The second occasion is much the same as the first, except when Cas wakes up from a troubled sleep on his second night in the bunker, he’s vaguely aware of his surroundings—enough so that he’s able to muffle his noises of panic. But Dean hears anyway, and the door creaks open.

“Cas?”

“I’m okay,” Cas manages. In fact it feels like his heart has somehow climbed up into his throat and is strangling him—which he knows is physically impossible, but that doesn’t make the sensation any less disturbing. “I just had—I suppose it was—a nightmare—"

“Yeah, I got that.” He can hear Dean’s bare feet slapping lightly against the wooden boards of the floor as the other man moves toward him. “It’s a big change, Cas. Going from angel to human, I mean. Anyone’d be freaked out.”

“I am not… freaked out.” _Merely being inexplicably suffocated by my own organs._ Cas refrains from voicing the last, but Dean apparently doesn’t accept that he’s okay, because the bed dips, and then Dean’s arms are around him again. Cas lets out a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding, and slowly, slowly, he is able to relax.

This time, when his heart rate slows and sleep rolls over him in a long, dark wave, he doesn’t dream at all. 

And when he wakes up in the morning, Dean is still lying next to him.

*****

The third night, Dean doesn’t wait for him to have a nightmare. He just walks in a few minutes after Cas lies down, and stretches out beside him, putting his arms around the ex-angel. Cas doesn’t object. He is discovering a wonderful truth of humanity—that the affectionate touch of another human can help keep one’s personal demons at bay.

Wrapped in Dean’s embrace, he doesn’t sleep right away. He’s conscious of things he hasn’t been aware of before—the heat of Dean’s body, the fact that his friend is only wearing a single layer of clothing. In the daytime, Dean wears layer upon layer of clothing, almost like armor separating him from the world. But now Dean is only wearing an old t-shirt and a pair of boxers. This is what Cas is wearing as well, and for the first time he thinks of how little there is separating their bodies.

He wonders what it would feel like if they were both naked.

The idea makes him hot with hunger and embarrassment and shame, all mingled together. As an angel, he never really thought of Dean that way. Of course he was fond of Dean— _loved_ Dean, if he's going to be honest about it—but angelic love is a pure and bright thing, chaste and clean and unmixed with human desire. Admittedly he’d always possessed the decidedly unangelic vice of curiosity, and he'd often wondered what kissing Dean would be like, had even envisioned running his hands over Dean’s body. But despite the graphic nature of these thoughts, they had been bereft of any sort of physical desire, weighted with a certain angelic detachment.

He no longer possesses that detachment. He is human, with human instincts clamoring inside him. The thoughts that were once abstract and vague are now painfully vivid, almost pornographic, and they turn over and over in his mind, making him stir restlessly.

“Can’t sleep?”

Dean’s voice, low and sympathetic in his ear. He stirs uncomfortably, aware of physical reactions that are not dissimilar to those of fear. His heart is pounding in his chest and his skin is growing damp.

“Afraid I’ll have nightmares, I guess,” he answers, knowing that he is blatantly lying. But he can hardly confess the truth, that he is experiencing arousal for the first time because Dean is lying beside him. He knows enough about humans in general, and Dean Winchester in particular, to be aware that Dean would find that statement extremely discomfiting.

“Just relax, buddy.” Dean’s hand begins stroking his hair again. It is both comforting and arousing, and Cas hears himself sigh raggedly. There is an unfamiliar tension in his body, and he instinctively wants to move, to roll his hips back against Dean, to find some way to alleviate the throbbing ache in his groin.

He sighs again, and forces himself to stillness. He lets Dean caress his hair and allows himself to enjoy it, tries to empty his mind of all extraneous thoughts. Slowly, the tension leaves him, and the pleasant sensation of Dean’s warm and gentle touch carries him into slumber.

He doesn’t have nightmares.

Instead, he dreams of kissing Dean.

*****

On the fourth night, Dean is already stretched out in his bed when Cas completes his evening ablutions and walks into his bedroom. He is taken aback to see Dean there, sprawled on the dark blue sheets, lit by the golden light of the bedside lamp, and he pauses at the door, studying the other man. Dean’s normally neat hair is rumpled, presumably because he changed shirts and didn’t bother to brush it. His body is lean and muscled, long bare legs stretching almost to the end of the bed. He looks oddly vulnerable in so little clothing, and Cas is suddenly aware of the freckles, not only on his face, but scattered over all his exposed flesh. They make him look almost like a little boy, albeit one who's over six feet tall.

“Hey,” he says, trying for a casual tone, as if finding Dean in his bed is perfectly ordinary. He walks across the room and lies down on his side of the bed. The fact that he has an established side makes his heart do something odd. It feels like it’s leaping in his chest. Once again, he knows that's a physical impossibility, but it's not an unpleasant sensation, not in the least. 

“Hey,” Dean answers without opening his eyes. Cas risks a glance at him, and sees the dark gold lashes lying against the freckled cheeks like fans. The sight makes him want to drop a kiss against Dean’s forehead. Just a single chaste kiss. Surely Dean would not mind.

But he knows Dean probably _would_ mind, and that awareness keeps him on his own side of the bed. He stirs slightly, aware of that uncomfortable tension tying knots in his groin, and flips off the bedside lamp, then pulls the sheet and comforter up over them both, to ensure Dean cannot see his response. 

Dean doesn’t seem inclined to wrap his arms around him, and Cas feels oddly cold despite the covers. He waits for a few moments, then, very cautiously, reaches out his own arm, and places it cautiously over Dean. The other man makes an _mmmmmmm_ sound, and rolls over, his back to Cas. Dean shifts until his back is pressed against Cas’ front, so that the two of them are lying together like spoons in a drawer. Just as they have been sleeping together, except this time Cas is the spoon in the back.

He is uncomfortably aware of Dean’s warmth against him, and his body’s reaction. He is familiar with human sexuality, and he knows his response is normal, but that does not change the fact that it is awkward, and if Dean happens to notice…

Fortunately for him, Dean begins to snore. Relieved, Cas lets the rigidity drain out of his muscles, and allows his head to move forward. He presses his nose into Dean’s hair and breathes in the evergreen fragrance of Dean's shampoo, and beneath it, Dean's own spicy smell.

The familiar scent lulls him to sleep.

*****

In the middle of the night, Cas awakens. Not because of a nightmare, but because something is touching him, stroking his skin, almost tickling him. He stirs and moans.

“Mmmffff?”

There is no answer, but he can feel something brushing delicately against his neck. He blinks into the darkness, and finally drags himself into enough wakefulness to determine that it’s Dean’s mouth, pressing lightly against his skin.

Dean is kissing him.

He is sleepy, confused, but his body seems to know what to do. His head drops back, granting Dean access to his throat, and his arms slide around Dean, one hand tangling in his hair, one hand dropping to his waist and pulling him closer.

Sometime during the night, Dean rolled over, and now they are facing one another. Their bodies rub together, and Cas is aware that he is experiencing a sexual response again. But so, he realizes, is Dean. They both have erections, and when they move against each other, the sensation is incredible.

As many times as he imagined touching Dean as an angel, he never imagined this sort of… carnality. He certainly never imagined it could feel this way. It’s like heat growing inside him, like an ember bursting into flame, like a plant unfurling from inside a bulb, deep in the soil, and emerging to bask in the sunlight.

His body moves of its own accord, his spine undulating, his hips moving so that their erections rub together faster, harder. There are two layers of fabric in the way, which he finds unreasonably irritating, and he reaches down with one hand and fumbles to shove his boxers out of the way. Dean does likewise.

And then there’s nothing but hot skin and moisture and sweat, and soft gasps and muttered curses and the desperate clutch of hands. It doesn’t seem to Cas that the simple experience of two bodies moving together could matter much, but it is extraordinary, overwhelming. He closes his eyes and loses himself in the sensations.

The heat swells inside him until he can hardly bear it, and he finds himself clinging to Dean, whispering _please please please_ for no reason he can understand. He is trembling like a leaf buffeted by a strong wind, and he can't seem to stop. His hips jerk frantically, spasmodically, and so do Dean’s, and suddenly there’s a tremendous rush of heat and moisture and a pleasure so intense he can’t prevent himself from shuddering, an ecstasy so great it drags a hoarse cry from his throat.

Dean is making noises too, low, resonant groans of pleasure, and another spurt of moisture makes Cas aware that Dean is experiencing the same rapture he himself just shuddered through. Dean swears and grunts and clings to him, and Cas holds him close.

Even when the heat has cooled and the pleasure has ebbed, Cas feels oddly light, as if he is drifting on a cloud. He lies in Dean's arms, drowsily content, for long moments.

Sanity returns slowly, and eventually Cas finds himself lying inert against the mattress, still breathing hard. Dean’s face is buried in his shoulder, and the two of them are tangled together, boxers pushed halfway down their thighs, sweat-soaked sheets twisted around them, semen drying all over their skin. 

The aftermath of sex, Cas thinks, is surprisingly… inelegant.

But he’s so warm and comfortable and relaxed that he doesn’t care all that much. Sleep is already beginning to reclaim him. He’s only vaguely aware of Dean getting up, of the sound of water running in the bathroom just down the hall, and then a warm washcloth sponging him off. He lies there, eyes closed, and lets Dean take care of him.

For the first time since Metatron cut out his grace, he feels genuinely human. He feels happy.

He feels like he belongs.


End file.
